Sony to Ship 46-Inch Google TV-Equipped LCD TV, Blu-Ray Player This fall

Sony will ship a 46-inch Google TV-based LCD TV and Blu-ray player this fall, while Logitech fields a standalone set-top box, Google Product Marketing Manager Brittany Bohnet told us Tuesday. Google was demonstrating the TV at a Best Buy news conference in New York City highlighting the chain’s holiday plans.

Best Buy and Sony Style stores will be among the first to carry the products, which will contain an Android operating system, Chrome browser and applications stored in 5 GB of the LCD TV’s 8 GB of flash memory, Bohnet said. The Sony and Logitech devices will be built around an Intel Atom processor and will have Ethernet and Wi-Fi connections, she said. Sony has scheduled a news conference Oct. 12 in New York City to introduce its Google TV products, a Sony spokesman confirmed, declining further comment.

Google will launch an applications store for Google TV after planning to release a software development kit in early 2011, Bohnet said. Google TV will launch an open source strategy as Google seeks to attract additional partners to introduce products, Bohnet said.

Sony and Logitech don’t have any exclusivity on introducing products, she said. The Google TV products will be packaged with a “unique” remote for controlling the devices, details of which have not been released, said Bohnet, who was using a keyboard to show off Google TV. Google hasn’t disclosed content partners for the service. HBO Go, CNN, CNBC and programmers that appear as icons on the Sony TV at the Best Buy news conference aren’t necessarily signed on as content suppliers, Bohnet said.

Google is negotiating with other potential partners, but isn’t “ready to announced anything yet,” Bohnet said. “That’s obviously the goal” to attract additional CE companies to the Google TV and “and part of the Android strategy to be on other platforms,” Bohnet said.

While Google TV may not be a “huge” product in terms of sales for Best Buy this holiday season, “it is important for showing what is going to come around that big screen,” Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn said.

Google TV, which operates within Google’s YouTube group, started with a small beta test in early summer that expanded to “several hundred” of the company’s employees, Bohnet said. The service requires a minimum 1 Mbps data rate and works best in the 3-6 Mbps range, Bohnet said.

"It’s only really been possible over the last year” to launch a service like Google TV, Bohnet said. “The amount of people with Internet-capable TVs and the ability to build applications into a processor converged and it’s the right time because people are starting to understand it."

Meanwhile, 3D TV sales have been “slower” than the industry expected because “I think we all underestimated the complexity of how to best and most effectively demonstrate that story for the consumer,” Dunn said. The 3D technology will be “more broadly distributed” in products next year and be in “virtually every TV” in 2012, Best Buy Americas President Michael Vitelli said. The 3D category will likely get a boost from a growing assortment of 3D games, he added.

"A 3D TV is your best 2D TV as well and 3D is a feature in that set,” Vitelli said. “I think as people start to understand more about that I think gaming will help make it interesting to a niche of consumers that aren’t out there in that space right now."

Best Buy’s CinemaNow video download service has been added via firmware upgrade to a range of Samsung Internet-capable LCD and plasma TVs, including 40-, 46-, 50- and 55-inch 7000 series LCD TVs priced at $1,599 to $2,599. It’s available with Samsung and LG Electronics Internet-capable Blu-ray players and LG LCD TVs. CinemaNow, which gets content from Sonic Solutions, has a library of 10,000 titles ranging from TV shows priced at $1.99 to new releases that are available for rent in HD and SD versions at $4.99 and $3.99. The new titles also can be purchased for $15.95. The CinemaNow service will be deployed across a broader array of products in 2011, including Best Buy’s private label Insignia goods, Vitelli said. In addition to being available in products, CinemaNow is being marketed with pre-paid cards and Geek Squad installers are promoting the service, said Nick DeVita, a home theater adviser in the Geek Squad in the New York City market.

"At the store and install level we're trying to let customers know how powerful their electronics can be,” DeVita said.

Best Buy also will increase the number of stores featuring a section for trading in and buying used videogames to 1,000 stores from the current 600, Vitelli said. The new department fills some of the space left when Best Buy “condensed” its assortment of CDs and DVDs in eliminating the slow sellers in each market, Vitelli said. Best Buy uses a third party to buy back the games and help with the assortment of used titles, Vitelli said. Best Buy also has freed space for demonstrating Sony’s PlayStation Move and Microsoft’s Kinect systems, which occupy an area in some stores previously used to demonstrate Guitar Hero, DeVita said. “Gaming is a big traffic driver and the trade in and used piece of that is for that young demographic,” Vitelli said. Best Buy also has increased the number of Blu-ray titles that stores carry, Vitelli said. And it also has a new e-reader section at the front of each outlet merchandising Sony’s e-Reader, Barnes & Noble’s Nook and Amazon’s Kindle, which arrived in Best Buy stores last week.

Best Buy will launch TiVo DVR-equipped Insignia LCD TVs in 2011 as step-up product in a range of screen sizes, Vitelli said. While Best Buy has long carried standalone TiVo DVRs, many customers initially balked at paying a monthly fee, Vitelli said. But with the growth of cellphone, broadband and other services, all of which carry a fee, that barrier has been eliminated, Vitelli said. “I think now” the monthly fee is “more ubiquitous” and TiVo’s DVR service “will do great once we get it embedded in more products,” Vitelli said.